


Left to Live

by Liitohauki



Series: Lost and Loved [5]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Gen, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Jötunn Loki, death of a fish, raised on Jötunheim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3688578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liitohauki/pseuds/Liitohauki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sea of white is vast and glowing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left to Live

**Author's Note:**

> It's funny how I don't set out to write these bits in 1500 word installments, but it just kind of keeps happening.
> 
> This one's a little heavier on the Finnish than the last two, but there's still not a whole lot of it and I've tried to make the content of the dialogue understandable through the text surrounding it. If you hover the cursor over the Finnish text, an English translation should pop up. Plus, there are translations of the Finnish lines at the end if anyone has difficulty reading the hover text.
> 
> If there's some particular aspect of this verse that you're curious about and would like me to explore in a story, leave a comment. I'm totally open to suggestions. So far, I've just been typing up whatever pops into my head.

The sea of white is vast and glowing.

It shines under the vibrant ribbons of light that twist above it on the dark sky. Wind beckons snow to dance in glittering eddies that race across the fields and lift into wispy spires before settling to wait for the whistling call to come again.

The skis on her feet are made of bone, long and sturdy. They fly her over drifts and down hills, along her mother’s tracks and away on her own. A varg runs beside her, its loping gait matching her pace easily. They take turns chasing each other as they follow the herd. The hallaporo are a mass of moving towers, heads stretching so far up above her that Loki thinks their antlers might catch stars and prick the moons with their prongs. Their breath clouds the air as they trudge on while the beat of their hooves sets the ice trembling slightly.

A howl pierces the quiet, high and long with a warble at the end. Loki stops, cups her hands around her mouth and howls back, letting her voice rise and fall sharply. A barked command has her varg running ahead. She reaches to her back for her staff, hefts it in hand and swings it in circles. Air flows through the hollow bone tied to the end of it, making it sing. There’s a commotion from the hallaporo. They bleat and grunt as they change direction, veering to the right. The vargs take care of any stragglers, yipping and barking and snapping at ankles to keep the herd in formation. Loki slips her staff back under the strap of her pack and launches herself into motion, skiing parallel to her mother on the other side of the herd.

They reach the shore by low tide. The ice is dark with algae, pushed ashore by the sea. Loki comes to a stop next to her mother, and they take off their skis and strike them into a snow bank before leading the hallaporo near the water. They leave them there to graze on seaweed and shellfish under the watchful yellow eyes of the vargs.

“Kunnossa?”

Amma’s gaze is sharp as it runs over her from head to heel. Loki answers her with a grin, shifting her pack to hang off of one shoulder while she grabs her staff. It’s the first time her amma has let her ski the whole way here, and while she feels a little tired, she thinks it a small price to pay for her mother’s approving nod and the sense of accomplishment chilling her blood.

“Seuraa askeltas ja varo pistiäisiä, äläkä—”

”—mene liian kauas rannasta. Juu, juu, mie tiedän kyllä,” Loki finishes the usual warning, looking skyward in a show of exasperation. The interruption earns her a gentle flick to the forehead. “Älä viisastele äidilles, kuutti,” her mother admonishes, tugging Loki closer by her braid, which has come undone during their journey. “ _Äitiii_ ,” Loki whines, trying to squirm from her grip, but Amma will have none of it. “Hys, ei tässä kestä kuin hetki,” she tells her while she pulls the strands loose and begins to rebraid her hair, tying it off once she has it woven tight enough to her liking.

“Nyt tiehes siitä,” she says and sends Loki on her way with a swat to her behind. Loki takes off at once, eager to escape Amma’s clutches. The algae squishes and crunches underneath her bare feet, slimy and half-frozen. She keeps a watchful eye on the ice. There are crabs the size of her mother’s palms scuttling about. They come out in droves during low tide to scavenge for an easy meal. Loki traps the biggest ones with the prongs of her staff and ices over their claws before dropping them in her pack. Soon enough, her bag is heavy with the weight of her catch, the frantic scrabbling of their legs making the leather wiggle.

They have a crab pool back home, a deep recess in the stone of one of the warmer caverns which they keep filled with salt water. Loki likes to dip her toes in the water to bait the crabs. Amma thinks she’s being silly. Loki just doesn’t want the crabs to get bored. It must be awfully dull, living in a little pool just waiting to die.

Once her pack is full, she leaves the rest of the crabs be and wanders around, looking for treasure; sometimes the tide brings in sweetstalk and seaflowers, or pretty things like shells and scales and volcanic rock from the bottom of the sea. She prods at the kelp in front of her with the end of her staff, careful not to step on anything that’s still alive.

There are some stingfloats washed up on shore, a few dead while others’ still fight futilely to save themselves by whipping their tails and flapping the fins peeking out from the edges of their shells. Despite her mother’s warnings to stay away, Loki approaches the live ones to pick them up with the pronged end of her staff so she can drop them back into the sea. The dead ones she collects and attaches to her pack by their tails. They’re not very heavy, their flat bodies roughly the size and shape of a close-toed hallaporo hoof print and their shells light.

She’s heard stories from her amma about giant stingfloats living in the vast ocean that surrounds the Ring and the Circle. She says they’re like the jötnar: they don’t grow old, they just grow and grow until something kills them. Sometimes, people live on their backs, and there are some stingfloats so large they carry whole cities with them. They drift around on the currents near the Dividor, where the sun rises and sets once every tide instead of once every cycle.

Loki wants to go visit a floating city, but Amma says that _she_ certainly won’t take her. Loki tells herself she doesn’t mind; she’ll find her own way there one tide.

Something soft and wet bumps into her back, and she turns around to find herself staring up at Hunsvo, one of their vargs. It nudges her with its nose and whines, long tail wagging behind it. It must have grown concerned, since Loki has wandered some ways from the herd. She scratches the underside of its long snout and tells it, “Alas.” Hunsvo lays down and Loki climbs onto its back, gripping the grey fur at its scruff.

She rides the varg back to her mother, who’s also managed to fill her pack even though it’s twice as large as Loki’s. She looks over Loki’s haul and clicks her teeth in satisfaction at all the large and healthy crabs she’s collected. They find themselves a comfortable spot on a ledge near the water where they can keep an eye on the herd and set their packs aside in the snow, sitting down for a well-deserved rest. Amma ties a line onto the end of her staff as Loki cuts strips of dried meat for her to bait the hook with.

Hook and line sink out of sight while the red and blue float hits the water with a faint plop and bobs along the surface. They sit and watch the float while nibbling on bits of meat and drinking from a skin full of hallaporo milk.

The water glints green and gold as the vibrant lights in the sky slowly undulate and ripple like eels. She wishes she could touch them; Mother once told her that back before Loki was even born, the people in the cities had great spires of ice which could call the lights to the ground to carry people off into the stars.

But then the King made the Asgardians mad by letting her people live on a realm the Asgardians wanted to keep for themselves. They came down and smashed the spires, and told the jötnar they couldn’t build them up again or they’d come back and smash the cities as well. Then they stole something very important from the big temple near Utgard and left.

The float sinks, and Amma pulls on her staff before drawing in the line. The juvusuomu she’s caught is as long as Loki’s arm. She unhooks it and tosses it onto the ice, where it gasps and flounders on one striped side until Amma takes a knife to its head and starts to scale and gut it. The rasp of her blade is repetitive and soothing. Loki baits the hook and tosses the line back into the water, sticking the staff upright in the snow. Her mother hands her a piece of fish, pale and flaky and moist, and they sit and eat and watch the play of colorful lights over the sea while the float bobs in the water.

Loki’s glad Amma’s the one who stole _her_ from the temple. She doesn’t think she would have cared to be found by people who smash things just because they don’t like to share.

**Author's Note:**

> Finnish to English
> 
> “Kunnossa?” = “Alright?”
> 
> “Seuraa askeltas ja varo pistiäisiä, äläkä—” = ”Watch your step and look out for stingers, and don’t—“
> 
> “—mene liian kauas rannasta. Juu, juu, mie tiedän kyllä.” = “—wander too far from shore. Yeah, yeah, I know already.”
> 
> “Älä viisastele äidilles, kuutti.” = “Don’t get smart with your mother, pup.” ("kuutti" means a baby seal in Finnish)
> 
> “Äitiii.” = “Motheeer.”
> 
> “Hys, ei tässä kestä kuin hetki.” = ”Hush, this will only take a moment.”
> 
> “Nyt tiehes siitä.” = “Now off with you.”
> 
> "Alas." = "Down."
> 
> The varg's name, "Hunsvo", is based on the word "hunsvotti" (rascal, scoundrel, person of ill-repute).
> 
> More imaginary critters! The “juvusuomu” gets its name from the words “juova” (stripe, streak, line) and “suomu” (scale). Amazingly imaginative, I know. I generally try to keep any names I come up with simple and descriptive, especially the English ones, since I often don’t bother describing animals in any sort of detail.


End file.
